Amnesty: Mexico failing to protect Central American migrants (Feature)

By Frank Fuhrig Apr 28, 2010, 6:01 GMT

Washington/Mexico City - Amnesty International issued a scathing report Wednesday documenting the Mexican government's failure to protect Central American migrants passing through Mexico bound for the United States.

Criminal gangs prey on the migrants, who come mostly from El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua, and preventing or prosecuting such crimes against foreigners is a low priority for state and federal authorities, the report said.

'In many cases that would appear at first glance to be the work solely of criminal gangs, there is evidence that state officials are involved at some level, either directly or as a result of complicity or acquiescence,' the human-rights group wrote.

The report, Invisible Victims: Migrants on the Move in Mexico, was compiled by Amnesty International representatives from 2008-09, through interviews with migrants, local human rights activists, Mexican authorities and others. It describes the trip that migrants take along the length of Mexico, often riding on top of freight trains, where they have become targets for bandits and extortion gangs.

Migrants in Mexico are facing a major human rights crisis leaving them with virtually no access to justice, fearing reprisals and deportation if they complain of abuses,' said Rupert Knox, Mexico researcher at Amnesty International.

Persistent failure by the authorities to tackle abuses carried out against irregular migrants has made their journey through Mexico one of the most dangerous in the world.'

Mexico's National Human Rights Commission (CNDH), an autonomous state agency, estimated last year that more than 9,000 Central American migrants were abducted within a six-month period in 2008-09 by criminal gangs conducting kidnapping for ransom. Victims are coerced to provide telephone numbers for relatives at home or already in the US, who are contacted with demands for money.

People who survived such ordeals described to Amnesty 'how migrants would be tortured or killed if the money failed to arrive on time.'

Women and even children make up a significant fraction of the migrants transiting through Mexico. Some estimates are that up to six in 10 women and girls are the victims of sexual violence during the trip.

Mexico is a signatory to all the major international human rights conventions, but in practice migrants who are extorted, robbed or assaulted physically or sexually find it difficult or even dangerous to report crimes or seek legal redress.

'Illegal migrants' lack of legal status means that effective recourse to the justice system is denied them,' the report found. 'This puts irregular migrants at heightened risk of abuse. Excluded from mainstream society and effectively denied the protection of the law, Mexico's irregular migrants are condemned to a life on the margins, vulnerable to exploitation by criminal gangs.'

Mexico is both a transit and a destination country for migration, as some Central Americans fill low-income jobs in agriculture and other sectors, which still often pay more than they can earn in their home countries - among the poorest in the Western hemisphere.

But Mexico is better known as a country of origin for migrants, who have been working in the United States by the millions for generations. In recent decades, the flow of Mexicans to the United States has extended beyond traditional immigrant clusters in the South-West and some big cities to rural communities and suburbs across the country.

In the process, the Mexican government has become increasingly vocal in defending the rights of its own migrants, both legal and illegal, in the US.

Most recently, state legislation signed into law in April in Arizona would require local police to enforce federal immigration law and detain illegal immigrants, if it survives legal challenges.

The Arizona law has raised the spectre of police challenging people to prove their legal status - possibly on the basis of nothing more than appearance - and provoked fierce criticism from Mexican officials from President Felipe Calderon down.

Mexico's own migrant problem at home, however, undercuts its ability to advocate for its own citizens abroad.

'Mexico is not in a very good position to criticize the United States in this regard,' Mark Krikorian, executive director of the Washington-based Centre for Immigration Studies, told the German Press Agency dpa.

He called Mexico's own immigration laws 'hypocritical' and 'draconian,' and even worse in practice than on paper. 'Informally, Mexican treatment of Guatemalans and other Central Americans is extraordinarily brutal,' said Krikorian, whose group lobbies for lower US immigration levels.

Amnesty International wrote that Mexico has 'been active in promoting respect for migrants' rights - for example, it has highlighted abuses against Mexican migrants in the USA, such as discrimination and the denial of economic and social rights.'

The report noted that Mexico 'has taken some steps in recent years to reduce abuses by state officials' against Central American migrants.

'For example, irregular migration is no longer an imprisonable criminal offence, conditions in some detention centres have improved, and the time most Central American irregular migrants spend in detention pending their repatriation or deportation has been reduced,' the report said.

'Despite such steps, abuses against irregular migrants continue to be a low priority for many state and federal authorities, especially if there is no clear evidence that state officials are directly implicated.'